The Hollywood Adaptation of One-Punch Man
by Niabi
Summary: Hollywood's looking for its next big thing, and its roving gaze settles on One-Punch Man. Brace yourself. – "Can you explain to me why the hero looks like this? Is he old or something? Why is he bald? We can't market an old guy superhero."


A/N: For anyone that ends up enjoying this premise, I've also written a couple other fics like this in different fandoms.

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 **The Hollywood Adaptation of One-Punch Man**

Don leaned back in his shape-conforming chair, waiting for his call to go through. Abruptly the dial tone stopped as a voice came on the line.

"Hello?"

"Steve, glad I got hold of you," he exclaimed, sitting up and focusing on the phone. "Listen, I've had a chance to go over your proposal, and I'm interested. It's a great premise, real promising, but there's just a few changes we'll need to make and some questions I need to clear up."

"Sure, okay," the voice responded eagerly.

"Great, so first off, I've gotta comment on this name. I mean, 'One-Punch Man?' It's, and I'll be honest with you, it's stupid. What's up with that?"

"Well, that's kind of the poin—" the voice began, but it was cut off.

"Shut up Steve, you're interrupting. But don't worry, we can come back to that problem later. For now, what about this character's real name? Sai-what? I can't pronounce this."

"It's Saitama," the voice clarified for him.

"Yeah, we're gonna have to change that to something English," Don confirmed.

"But the character's Japanese," the voice on the other end reminded him.

"Sweet Mary, Steve, you don't think we're going to keep the setting in Japan, do you?" Don asked incredulously as he stared at the phone. "Audiences are never gonna go for that! You think we can have some Asian in a lead role?"

There was dead silence from the other end.

"That's what I thought," Don continued, sounding pleased with himself. "Now, about all these aliens and weird subterranean monsters that show up. We're gonna have to ditch 'em, they're too weird for audiences. We'll have the hero go up against some shadowy evil organization instead. This evil genetic scientist had a whole thing going on, right? We can use that," Don commented as he skimmed the notes Steve had sent him.

"But the aliens and monsters—"

"Shut up Steve, I'm not done," Don admonished absently. "Now can you explain to me why the hero looks like this? Is he old or something? Why is he bald? We need an attractive lead, Steve. We can't market an old guy superhero."

There was a crackled sigh from the other end, then the voice explained in a defeated tone, "He lost his hair from his intense training regimen. Genos is supposed to be the attractive one."

"Genos?" Don questioned with a frown as he searched through the notes. "Oh, the cyborg sidekick? Yeah, that's actually pretty cool, we can keep that."

"Well, he's actually more of a disciple—" the voice explained, sounding brighter.

"—But we can't have the sidekick be more attractive than the hero," Don continued blithely. "Don't worry, we can work on that."

There was a muffled, "Of course we can," from the other end, but Don didn't seem to take any notice of it.

As he skimmed through the notes again, he commented absently, "And on the subject of sex appeal, I think we should make this speed ninja character a chick."

 _"What?"_ The voice on the other end choked.

"Well, we need a love interest for the hero, and I'm not seeing many other options," Don explained in exasperation. "Baddie ninja chicks are great for sexual tension."

"But there _is_ no sexual tension between them, the character's a guy, and he's a criminal to boot!" The voice exploded.

" _Exactly._ Only on that last part, mind you," Don clarified. "Her being a criminal makes it hotter."

"He's a _guy_ ," the voice insisted doggedly, sounding suspiciously as if it'd come through clenched teeth.

"Come on, Steve, I'm looking at its picture right now, and this character is practically a girl already!" Don argued dismissively.

There was only incoherent sputtering from the other end of the line.

"So, moving _on_ ," Don continued pointedly. "Is this origin story for real? Like, did you just make this up to see if I'd buy it? That's not how the hero really got his powers, right?"

There was a deep, crackled breath from the other end before it said, "No, that's really how the hero gets his powers. It's supposed to be—"

But Don paid no further attention and instead interrupted, "Well that's just stupid, we can't use that. Let's say the hero got his powers from some genetic experiment."

"But—"

"Shut up Steve, I'm brainstorming," Don retorted automatically, then suddenly sat up and snapped his fingers. "Say, we can have the hero be the result of that evil scientist's experiments! It's perfect! The hero escapes his creators—"

"When did he become a scientist's _creation?_ " The voice muttered over the line.

"—and becomes a hero as penance for his nefarious origin, ultimately battling the very organization that created him!" Don finished excitedly. "It's brilliant! The whole plot's coming together!"

Something that sounded like a groan came through from the other end.

"Now," Don continued as he settled down again, "it's important that we find a way to include this gay guy somehow."

"Wait, really?" The voice asked, sounding surprised.

"Of course! We gotta reel in that LGBT demographic! This gay's the perfect opportunity! And he's in prison, right? We can work with that. Shows even superheroes go to jail here, highlights how gritty the world is.

"In fact," Don pressed on, an eager grin spreading across his face, "we can have the hero end up in prison due to the manipulations of the evil organization and meet the gay and all his boyfriends there! Somewhere around the end of the second act, that way the gay can even be the one to give the hero the pep talk that inspires him to keep fighting when he's feeling down and out. Leads nicely into the third act!"

For a brief moment there was silence from the other end, then the voice came on again. "That's… great, but maybe we shouldn't make a point of showing the very large man's multiple _prison boyfriends_."

"Are you kidding? Of course we're going to show them, it sends the positive message that we're okay with gays!"

"You mean that it's okay to _be_ gay?" The voice checked.

"Shut up Steve, no need to be snarky."

"Y'know, if you really want gay representation, you could always just keep the ninja character a guy and still have him be the love interest for the hero," the voice muttered.

Don sucked in a breath. "Now, look, Steve, we just can't do that. The hero's love interest has to be female, that's just the way it is. It's, look, it'd make the audience uncomfortable, we can't do that. It just wouldn't work. We're slaves to the times, y'know? The audience just can't handle something like that. That's just the way it is. Now, I think it's time we move on to another subject."

Don busily checked over the notes for a moment while silence reigned on the other end. "Ah, yes, right, I nearly forgot. Just one more minor thing, we're gonna have to tone down the hero's power levels. Being able to defeat any enemy with a single punch is boring, we don't want a Superman on our hands."

"Wait, _what?_ But the character's name is literally One-Punch Man! It won't make sense if you do that!"

"Yeah, we'll have to give him a different name, something like 'The Flying Fist,'" Don agreed. "It's got that two words starting with the same letter thing that's popular with superhero names."

"So what are you planning to call the movie?" The voice ground out.

"Hmm, lemme think on that. No, wait, hang on, I've got it! We'll call it, 'Punch,'" he announced happily. "And the sequel will be 'Double Punch!'"

For a long moment there was nothing from the other end, until finally the voice responded with an air of resignation, "You want me to just go ahead and start writing this up?"

"Uh, yeah Steve, get on it. Write me something that'll have everybody talking!"


End file.
